Storm in a teapot

Kara Swisher wrote a post recently Twitter: Where Nobody Knows Your Name. While attending a wedding at Washington D.C., she did an informal technology survey with about 30 people all of whom were quite intelligent, armed with all kinds of the latest devices (many, many people had iPhones, for example) and not sluggish about technology.

There are her findings (not at all surprising to me), quoting from her article

The grand total who knew what Twitter was: 0
Same goes for FriendFeed: 0
Widget: 1 (but she thought it was one of the units used in a business class study).
Facebook: Everyone I asked knew about it and about half had an account, although different people used it differently.

So her conclusion,

In other words, confirming for me what I wrote last week about the intense obsession with the hottest new services like Twitter and FriendFeed, in the echo chamber of Silicon Valley, and how no one else cares yet.

Basically all the fuss about FriendFeed and Twitter in the tech world sounds very much like storm in a teapot, I couldn’t agree more. But the question then why is a service like Facebook so much more mainstream than FriendFeed or Twitter? Perhaps it’s a matter of time before Twitter and FriendFeed gets more adoption but IMO, the simple answer is that the value of Facebook, likewise MySpace or Youtube, is immediately obvious to non-techie users. If a service make non-techie users work to figure out how to use it, you have lost them, pure and simple. Also, I suspect that non-techie users have no idea what a feed is, much less feed aggregator or mashups.

This post is actually a lead up to my next post on a current ongoing DataPortability DIY project of the month on rel=me adoption, rel=me is a XFN (XHTML Friends Network) microformat standard, I will explain more in the next post.

Master of My Domain

The infamous Seinfeld line “Master of My Domain” comes to mind when I learn of a new upcoming social network ( to debut summer 2008 ) called Chi.mp. My first impression was “Do we really need another social network?” Isn’t there enough social networks to numb the mind causing further social network fatigue? At least that’s how I feel when I read the unending stream of posts at sites like Techcrunch, they are a blur and rarely stands out.

The same goes for the numerous data portability standards or solutions, there are just so many of them out there solving the same problem over and over again and not going anywhere. At this point data portability isn’t about lack of technology, it is about too much technology and not enough consensus, which is why I think DataPortability.org came about with a goal to bring consensus, at least that’s the idea, execution will determine success or failure. Which leads me to wonder how did some of these standards rose above the fray and got adopted by the community, standards like openID, OAuth, microformats are some examples. Perhaps more thoughts on this later in another post – feel free to share if you have any thoughts on this.

So back to Chi.mp. I learned about it from a CNet post The Web 2.0 economy hangs in limbo talking about Mashable enlisting Chi.mp to throw a party like it was 1999 (Prince and first internet boom comes to mind) all over again. Digging further leads me to Chi.mp’s blog, ownyouridentity.com. At first glance, the first post Feudalism 2.0 (or serfing the web) gave me pause for “seriously, another social network? Argh”.

However, once one of the founder (Tony Haile) clarified for me how Chi.mp is different than other solutions like People Aggregator or Ringside social application platform, a light bulb went off for me. Chi.mp’s basic premise is that instead of relying on social networks like MySpace or Facebook to host your profile and your relationship goodness keeping you and your friends prisoner behind their walled gardens, you host “you” on Chi.mp. This is done by you having your own domain, e.g., bobngu.com, that is mine and only mine. Social networks can then interact with your domain to gain access to your identity, profile, and friends information at your discretion. Now you see why the expression “Master of My Domain” comes to mind for Chi.mp. IMO this is disruptive technology and a great next step in data portability. Chi.mp also claims to make it open so that I can take my information to another service provider if I don’t like their service. Great stuff.

On a personal note, I am not enamored with the domain name “Chi.mp”, I know it is short for “Content Hub and Identity Management Platform” but Chi.mp makes me feel like an un-evolved user who is only capable of pushing buttons or doing menial tasks for rewards. Plus Content Hub and Identity Management Platform is just well too geeky (even though I am a geek) for my taste. Now, “Master of My Domain” that’s something a non-geeky user can relate to, not to mention it’s a double (or is it triple) entendre. Interestingly enough, I started having some new startup ideas of my own that could be potential partners to something like Chi.mp, I registered and got the domain name vanitybadge.com before I learn of Chi.mp, coincidence or fate? I would relish the opportunity to work with them.

Doing the right thing vs. doing the things that matter to users

So Ning just got a $500M valuation, see Techcrunch’s post Ning Worth Half A Billion Dollars and Marc Canter isn’t happy about it, so unhappy that he wrote 2 posts about it Ning earns $1.7 a year on paid subs and they’re worth HOW much?, Response to Jean Hughes Robert on his comment about Ning.

After digging into a bit, I learn that Marc also has a similar company to Ning, People Aggregator. You can get an overview of People Aggregator from a Techcrunch post almost 2 years old A look inside PeopleAggregator. Quoting from the post,

Here’s how it works. PeopleAggregator.net will be a fully functioning online social network in and of itself, but it will share information with other services through common identity standards for our profiles and through APIs (application programming interfaces) for our writing, multimedia and contacts.

Perhaps most important, PeopleAggregator will also provide new social networks with hosted software and later next month will offer downloads of the software for organizations who prefer to host it themselves. Licenses will be free for nonprofits and will cost commercial ventures a one-time sum after they successfully monetize the system.

What this means is that it will be easy to come and go from new social networks, instead of being locked in to one just because you’ve put the time and energy into using your account there. Instead of being at the mercy of one centralized database and service, if Canter’s vision succeeds then countless social networks will proliferate with unique styles and function but with interoperability.

It appears that Canter’s rant about Ning’s valuation might have something to do with People Aggregator not being as successful as Ning or Facebook. Quoting from this Valleywag post, Marc Canter tells Mark Zuckerberg how to run Facebook,

Oh, and Canter’s screed certainly wouldn’t have anything to do with Canter’s own also-ran social network, PeopleAggregator, which has attracted few users despite “doing the right thing.” The right thing, apparently, being “failing.” Sure. Canter can’t replicate the success of Facebook, and he can’t make the marketplace care about his values.

The reason why I am writing about this is that People Aggregator’s purpose is very relevant to the data portability effort. So relevant in fact it reads like the Data Portability manifesto. But yet why did it not catch on like Facebook or Ning? People Aggregator did all the right things WRT to making data portable whereas Facebook is primarily a walled-off social network and Ning, while being a white-label social network provider, isn’t nearly as open (even though they implemented OpenSocial) as People Aggregator.

My thoughts on why People Aggregator isn’t as successful is what I said in the title of this post “Doing the right thing vs. doing the things that matter to users”. In particular, Facebook and Ning did more of what matters to the users than People Aggregator. In the end, it’s the users that determine that success of a social network. For the most part, your average user, while inconvenienced by having to re-enter a lot of their profile and friends data on different social networks, aren’t deterred enough to not join those social sites. Bottom line, the benefits of the walled-off sites outweigh the pain of re-entering your profile and friends data which leads me to rethink one of my earlier posts on The many faces of Data Portability. I believe that ultimately, the data portability standards that matter are the ones that provide real and substantial values to the users rather than what is right from an ideology viewpoint.

OAuth Explained

Ok, I admit this post is for geeks but even geeks can’t keep up with all the latest technology all the time, so I guess I am ungeeking OAuth (pronounced “Oh Auth” and short for Open Authorization) for geeks, wait, is that like oxymoron?

Problem Domain
If you have accounts on multiple social sites like youtube, facebook, myspace, flickr, etc, you have probably been asked by at least one if not all of the sites to invite your friends during signup and probably repeatedly afterwards. Usually this involves handing over your private username and password to your favorite email accounts like Yahoo, Gmail, etc. By handing over your private information, you allow the site(s) to scrape your email contacts for their emails so the site(s) can spam them with invites, lovely huh. In the back of my mind, I always have this discomfort about what the site(s) might do with my private login information, it’s like giving someone the keys to your house and hope that they don’t make a copy and raid your house later on.

Solution OAuth
I extracted most of the 2 paragraphs below from the OAuth About page.
Obviously sharing the same discomfort as me, a few open source developers got together and studied several existing proprietary authentication implementations (Google AuthSub, AOL OpenAuth, Yahoo BBAuth, Upcoming API, Flickr API, Amazon Web Services API, etc). Each protocol provides a proprietary method for exchanging user credentials for an access token or ticker. Out comes OAuth based on the best practices and common functionality of the proprietary implementations.

So what is OAuth? OAuth allows the you the User to grant access to your private resources on one site (which is called the Service Provider), to another site (called Consumer Application, not to be confused with you, the User). This isn’t the same as OpenID. While OpenID is all about using a single identity to sign into many sites, OAuth is about giving access to your stuff without sharing your identity at all (or its secret parts).

OAuth Process Flow
I extracted most of the following from an excellent post Developing OAuth clients in Ruby.

To better understand things, let’s look at the process flow – you probably need to be a developer to make sense of it.

1. Register your consumer application with the OAuth compliant service provider to receive your Consumer Credentials (This is only done once)
2. You initiate the OAuth Token exchange process for a user by requesting a RequestToken from the Service
3. You store the RequestToken in your database or in the users session object
4. You redirect your user to the service providers authorize_url with the RequestToken’s key appended
5. Your user is asked by the service provider to authorize your RequestToken
6. Your user clicks yes and is redirected to your CallBack URL
7. Your callback action exchanges the RequestToken for an AccessToken
8. Now you can access your users data by performing http requests signed by your consumer credentials and the AccessToken.

If you want more details (especially if you are a Ruby on Rails guy), check out the post Developing OAuth clients in Ruby.

Is FriendFeed all that?

In the post, How our digital lives are spreading out, Scoble dotes on FriendFeed and in a separate post said that his new blog design will be heavily influenced by FriendFeed, whatever that means. If he likes it any more, he would marry FriendFeed, talk about an unholy union. BTW, is Scoble migrating his online presence from his blog to FriendFeed an example of “Decentralized Me” or rather “Centralized Decentralized Me”?

All joking aside, his post got me thinking about whether FriendFeed is all that Scoble gushes about. I can see FriendFeed’s appeal for someone like him, a tech pundit and blogger with his own company fully immersed in the web 2.0 lifestyle doing a zillion things at one time. But what about your average user, Joe Blow, who enjoys watching the occasional video, rarely if ever posting a video, probably doesn’t have a blog, maybe has a MySpace or Facebook profile and well, generally not all that interesting to anyone else other than his friends and family. To which I say, Friendfeed isn’t really all that interesting to him, at least not in the same way as someone like Scoble.

The way I see it, services like FriendFeed and Twitter are particularly meaningful for someone who is well-known in his field, has a lot of followers / readers, and a desire to further extend his brand online. For the average user who doesn’t have much of an audience, it quickly becomes boring for him to friendfeed or twitter. However, the value of FriendFeed to an average user is keeping abreast of his favorite online personality activities. What say ye, FriendFeed and Twitter users.

BTW, how does Scoble keeps tab on 16,000 people? Talk about information overload.

Updated 4/4/2008
I must have been channeling Scoble when I wrote this post (or maybe I stole his speech for Next Web Conference) but here’s what Scoble said per Techcrunch post Live From the Next Web (2008): Day 2

Kicking things off is Robert Scoble, who is talking about the new digital divide: People with friends and people without friends. The old digital divide (rich versus poor) still exists. But the new digital divide is a consequence of how social software works. You have a better experience on Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, Upcoming or even Google Reader the more friends that you have. But if you don’t have any friends, the experience really sucks.

Is OpenSocial Shindig a trojan horse?

No, not that kind of trojan horse but you will see what I mean later on. The more I learn about OpenSocial, the more I think it is making a strategic play as the de facto social networking standard not just for gadget apps container but also how to link containers (as Chris Saad puts it) as it pertains to data portability.

Here’s why I think so. OpenSocial has a reference implementation Shindig (written in Java) that any social site can drop into its infrastructure, hook up some connections between Shindig and their backend and presto, the site now supports OpenSocial apps (at least in theory). Quoting from this blog

As Google product manager Dan Peterson describes in Let’s get this shindig started: “Shindig is a new project in the Apache Software Foundation’s incubator (as per the formal proposal) that aims to provide an open source reference implementation of the entire OpenSocial stack — Shindig’s goal is to allow new sites to start hosting social apps in well under an hour’s worth of work.” This source “is based upon code that has been powering Google Gadgets and iGoogle for the past few years and is meant to bootstrap the Shindig project.”

Did you catch that part about “in well under an hour’s worth of work”? That’s very appealing to social sites because it is of minimal impact to their existing code base. At the minimum, it gives them great incentive to try it out and see how well it works. And once it is in, it usually stays. That means OpenSocial can easily proliferate across social sites making it a practiced standard in the wild.

OpenSocial is known for making gadget apps portable but they are going beyond that already. There is currently a proposal to make OpenSocial APIs RESTful. IMO, this is the “linking containers” bit. RESTful APIs is an open standard and can be called by anyone through HTTP essentially opening up the social site users data through OpenSocial. And the more social sites with OpenSocial support, the more it becomes a standard in the wild.

Maybe I am off the mark here, if you think so, I would like to hear from you (leave a comment) why.

Facebook and Microsoft to join OpenSocial

I heard from a reliable source (sorry, can’t reveal) today that Facebook and Microsoft will both be making announcements sometimes this week that they are joining the OpenSocial Foundation along with Google, Yahoo, and MySpace. Both companies plan to commit development resources along with some amount of cash infusion. This is huge given how both Microsoft and Facebook have been so walled off when it comes to their users data. I see this as a huge step towards general data portability effort.